Has Nokia made the right decision in partnering with Microsoft to use Windows
Phone 7 as its flagship operating system? Matt Warman thinks not.

Rumoured since the moment Stephen Elop took over as CEO, Nokia’s big announcement today needed to get the company the positive headlines it so desperately needs. This had to be the moment that Nokia became aspirational again. Instead, the company signed up with Windows Phone 7, an operating system that does not yet even have cut and paste.

It’s easy to condemn Vic Goduntra’s tweet yesterday that “two turkeys don’t make an eagle” as merely sour grapes: Nokia is known to have held extensive talks with Google. But where Apple’s iOS surges ahead in terms of both user experience and hardware integration, Nokia is now only just getting off square one with a whole new operating system. Where Google is innovating in new ways with apps, gesture search and integration into a burgeoning ecosystem of products, Nokia must hope its presence bolsters the slowly growing community of App developers signed up with Windows Phone 7.

Of course, Nokia’s sales will rise off the back of this new deal when the new handsets emerge. But the transition period will be tough; who will buy any Nokia smartphone currently on the market? The two companies say they are already working together. But Nokia’s strength has consistently been in hardware; its software has not been at the cutting edge for several years now. Mr Elop frankly admitted that the company would struggle to differentiate within the Android , and that was the reason it went with Microsoft.

So did Nokia make the right decision? Yes – economically, Microsoft was the only option. If you work for a big corporation, your chief technology officer or IT manager is now more likely to order you and your colleagues a Nokia Windows Phone than ever before. And competition from Nokia within WP7 will improve that operating system and make it more competitive with rivals.

But will the end user experience be as good as Android’s or Apple’s? No. Nokia made the right choice for Nokia. It made the wrong one for consumers.